Building a Plan

Today we started learning what it actually takes to build something here on the "Wild Coast". We have seen old buildings, new buildings, renovated buildings and some that shouldn't even be called buildings. When we started this project and thought about the possibility of building something, we had no concept of the process. However, we thought that if we kept moving forward we would come up with the proper plan. Well, that part of this trip is now upon us. There are a number of details that we have to pin down, even before we figure out the actual price. Here are just a few:

• Find a licensed builder (not an easy task where the most common building material is mud-brick).
• Get permission to build from School Board and acquire "approved plans" from the Department of Education (again, not easy for 2 New Yorkers 8,000 miles from home).
• Find someone who lives here and someone we can trust that will act as our project manager to take care of the plans while we are back home fundraising.
• Decide what materials to use (as any contractor will tell you, the list of materials and design decisions can cause quite a mess).
• Make sure that only local labor is used (the unemployment rate in South Africa is close to 40%, here in Coffee Bay its closer to 90%).
• Plan out site security (materials can disappear very quickly).
• Make sure builders and workers know that we will be back to supervise project. We must ensure that all money we raise goes towards that project (in most cases this idea has been very well received, as too many charity projects just give money that doesn't benefit what is was supposed to).
• Get an honest price estimate (difficult anywhere, but in a place where there is a language barrier...).
• Decide which school we want to build for (by far the toughest part of this project).

Tommorrow is Sunday, by Monday we intend to Travel to Umtata to get building plans, take care of all the needed details while we are here, and then head home by week's end. We will see you all very soon.